THE BLACK BRYONY— continued. 
The genus Tamus comprises only two species, T. creiica L., a native of the 
Eastern Mediterranean region, and our British species, which shows the southern 
character of the Family by not advancing to the north of England and Belgium. 
T. cretica L. has trilobed leaves, whilst one great charm of our own species is the 
graceful but simple outline and lustrous gloss of its foliage. Its leaves, which arise 
singly at the nodes, have relatively long petioles, a heart-shaped base, and a long 
tapering apex recalling the “drip-tips” so frequent among the climbing plants of 
the jungles of the Tropics. Minute when first expanded, they enlarge to a length 
of three inches and sometimes become slightly angular or obscurely lobed. They 
have reflexed, awl-shaped stipules and from five to seven primary veins running 
palmately from the base of the leaf in sweeping curves following the leaf-margins, 
much as do those of the Lily-of-the-valley, but branching repeatedly and 
anastomosing in a manner more like those of Paris or of Dicotyledons. The 
shining lustre remains on the leaves from their first olive-green unfolding until 
autumn, when their deeper green turns to a dark bronzy purple wellnigh black, and 
then decays to a vivid lemon-yellow. 
The plant is dioecious, both male and female blossoms, which appear in May 
and June, being minute, only about one-sixth of an inch across, green, bell-shaped, 
and polysymmetric. The male are borne on slender slightly-branched axillary 
racemes and have six deeply-divided perianth-segments, united below and spreading 
horizontally above, and six short stamens. The female are in shorter, few-flowered 
clusters, each blossom showing the smooth ovate ovary below its perianth. As 
summer advances to autumn this enlarges to an oval juicy berry, half an inch in 
length, crowned by the remains of the persistent perianth, and turning from a limpid 
emerald-green to an equally translucent crimson. Each berry consists of three 
carpels and in its earlier stage had three spreading stigmas. Each carpel produces 
one or two globose, blackish, albuminous seeds, and in the ripe berry the partitions 
between the chambers disappear. 
The acrid clammy juice of the tubers has purgative and diuretic properties ; 
and the use of the grated tubers for plasters to remove the discoloration of bruises 
has gained for the plant its French name of Herbe aux femmes battues. The young 
shoots lose their acridity on being boiled, and have been used instead of Asparagus ; 
whilst the berries steeped in gin or brandy are a popular and excellent remedy for 
chilblains. It is, perhaps, well that these beautiful fruits should, according to the 
wholesale dictum of the Misses Jane and Ann Taylor that 
“ Fruits in lanes are seldom good,” 
bear among children the name of Poison-berries. It was probably merely the 
serpentine twining of its festooned stems that — by the doctrine of signatures — 
earned the plant the names of Snake-berry and Adder ’s-meat and a repute as a cure 
for snake-bite ; but in the old herbals many other medical virtues are ascribed 
to the species. 
